Concerns abound surrounding upcoming changes to popular Adobe Photoshop alternative's offering as Affinity online store disappears
Serif's Affinity Photo and Designer have been great alternatives to the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator for those who would rather pay for a one-time perpetual licence instead of an ongoing subscription. Recently, however, Serif has taken the Affinity software store offline and replaced the landing page with a message that reads "True creative freedom is just around the corner" along with an October 30 launch date and a link to an announcement newsletter.
While Serif seems to be planning a big announcement, there is more than a little concern from the community due to its recent acquisition by Canva — a software company that offers a free image editor that's become packed to the gills with AI-enhanced features.
At the time of writing, the Affinity announcement post on X has 510 likes and over 240 replies, many of which are from users concerned about the future of the company and its software. Shortly after Canva acquired Affinity, Canva's CEO said in an interview that the company would lean into AI as a creative tool, but that she recognised the Affinity community's aversion to generative AI and the potential reputational damage that leaning too hard into AI could cause. Still, however, users remain concerned that Affinity will return on October 30 with a slew of new AI features that the community didn't ask for and potentially even a subscription model instead of a one-time purchase.
Adding fuel to this fire is the closure of the official Affinity Forum on October 5, with support and community sharing moving over to Discord instead. The forum will remain live as a read-only searchable database, but there will be no new posts or comments at all. The concern here being that the lack of a searchable forum would quash publicly available complaints about the new subscription model.
Affinity hasn't really said anything concrete in response to questions and complaints about the addition of generative AI and a subscription model, with the clearest response reading:
We hear you! Fairness and freedom are what Affinity was built on and we’re excited to share what we’ve been building. Hold tight to October 30, you’ll like what’s coming.
How that statement should be interpreted is up to the individual, but there's a decent amount of cynicism surrounding the launch, even after Affinity's replies, with many commenters stating that the vague reply merely confirms their suspicions and that they would never pay a subscription for Affinity. Previously, a one-time purchase of $164.99 granted users a perpetual licence for Affinity Photo 2, Designer 2, and Publisher 2 across all platforms.
Source(s)
